Sunday, June 5, 2016

Join Protest demonstration by DUTA ON 6th June at UGC from 9:30 am!
3.6.16
Friends,
Teachers in Universities and colleges across the country have been
fighting against the manner in which academic performance of teachers
are being calculated through a system called Academic Performance
Indicator (API) which was introduced by UGC in its 2010 Regulations. API
system will calculate the performance of the teachers in quantifiable
terms and these assessments are linked to their promotions. It was
withdrawn after facing massive resistance from the teaching community in
2013 but it was re-introduced. The system takes no account of the
infrastructural inadequacies of public institutions and it would
adversely impact the promotion prospects of thousands of teachers. It
does not take into account the amount of time spent for the preparation
of teaching beyond workdays and work hours and reduces teaching into a
“corporate-model professionalism”. Given these criticisms and mounting
pressure, Nigaverkar Committee was formed to look into this matter among
other issues in July 2015 by Ministry of Human Resource Development. It
is reported that the committee submitted its recommendations to the
regulatory body in early 2016. The committee has not only legitimized
the existing API system but also introduced more aggravations.
The Gazette Notification of Third Amendment to UGC Regulations, dated
May 10th 2016, has incorporated Nigaverkar Committee recommendations in
it. The Amendment notification of UGC, 2016 includes changes in the
working hours of teachers. The UGC Regulations 2010 under the section
“workload” states that “direct teaching-learning process hours per week”
will be 16 hours for Assistant Professors and 14 for Associate
Professors and Professors and lectures and tutorials are both counted as
“direct teaching-learning contact hours”. The Amendment notification of
2016 increased the working hours of Assistant Professors from 16 to 24
hours under two sections: 18 hours for lectures and 6 hours for
tutorials, from 14 to 22 (16 hours for lectures and 6 for tutorials)
hours for associate professors and from 14 to 20 hours (14 for lectures
and 6 for tutorials) for professors.
The amendment also points out that tutorials can no longer be put in
the same category as lectures (in direct teaching-learning contact
hours) but have to be marked out separately. Though it was pointed out
by an earlier UGC notification that with the increase in the numbers of
students, “the tutorial sessions originally which are envisioned with
groups of 4-5 students, now effectively include 16 to 20 members thus
qualifying as full-fledged teaching workload”. The weightage carried by
practical classes have been reduced to half of that which is carried by
lectures in terms of workload per hour.So there will be a steep increase
in working hours in science departments.Nearly 50 percent of the
existing teachers in all universities would be rendered redundant and it
would drastically curtail numbers of vacancies and posts because of the
increase in the workload of teachers holding permanent positions. The
worst affected will be the ad-hoc and guest teachers who are already
deprived of professional entitlements and will lose their jobs because
of unavailability of work.
The workload per day for assistant professors would be 4.8 hours
including both lectures and tutorials, 4.4 hours and 4 hours for
associate professors and professors when there are five working days in a
week. It clearly shows that the workload in 2016-UGC regulations does
not take into account hours of preparation that lectures and tutorials
(which have now become equally demanding as lectures due to the increase
in the number of students) require and also hours spent by teachers to
produce quality research work. This UGC notification says that points
would be awarded on the basis of publications made in UGC recognized
journals and accounted for promotions.
It would severely harm the quality of teaching in higher education.It
is an attempt to promote specific areas of research by limiting the
number of journals in which one can publish for the advancement of
his/her professional career and to discourage those research works which
challenge the ideology of those who are in power by making them
irrelevant in terms of getting promotion or employment. True to its
ideology, ABVP, the students organization of RSS, has welcomed the
regulations of UGC.
The fascist forces are constantly attacking and attempting to
saffronize the educational institutions of this country by placing their
stooges in key positions in these institutions. Students movements are
rising up across the country, FTII, IIT-Madras, HCU, JNU, AU, BHU, etc,
against these fascists diktats.The government’s attempt, through this
amendment, is to make structural changes in higher education to further
advance the neo-liberal policies with the sole agenda to sell education
as a commodity and at the same time saffronize the educational
institutions. The forceful introduction of semester system in Delhi
University, FYUP and CBCS, API system and UGC regulations of 2016 which
not only severely affects the teachers but also students are attempts,
guided by neoliberal policies of the state, to destroy the education
institutions of this country. Against the UGC notification, Delhi
University Teachers Association called for a mass boycott of evaluation
duties and took out a march. Democratic Students’ Union stands in
solidarity with DUTA in its struggle against anti-teacher and
anti-student UGC regulations.
DSU firmly stands against this government’s design to saffronize higher education and sell education. Students-Teachers Unity Long Live !
dsu